Current Affairs for IAS Exams - 11 July 2017
::National::
Terrorists attack Amarnath yatri's
- Seven Amarnath pilgrims, including six women, were killed and 32 injured when terrorists opened fire at a patrol vehicle on the Srinagar-Jammu Highway.
- The patrol vehicle came under fire at Anantnag’s Batengo area around 8.30 p.m. The attack took place after quick response teams of the Army had withdrawn from the highway around sunset, making the vehicle vulnerable.
- Six pilgrims were killed in the attack and later one died of injuries in hospital. Three of those injured were in a critical state. The deceased pilgrims belonged to Gujarat and were returning after visiting the cave shrine.
- Bus was not registered with the Shri Amarnath Shrine Board and was travelling against the advisory not to ply after sunset.
- The police had asked all vehicles carrying pilgrims to cross the Jawahar Tunnel in daylight and avoid travelling in the Valley after sundown.
- Meanwhile, political parties have condemned the attack. Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti said it was an attack on Kashmir’s culture and value system.
- The CRPF is one of the main security forces deployed along the 40-day annual yatra route.
Govt is probing the technical glitches in NSE
- India is investigating whether last week’s outage of Airtel network in Delhi, alleged data breach of users of Reliance Jio Infocomm and the technical glitch at the NSE were part of a “possible cyberattack.”
- In 2016, security codes of around 32 lakh debit cards were breached and several users reported unauthorised transactions from locations in China.
- Events like this have prompted the government to have a customised cyber security policy for each ministry and department.
- On July 7, Airtel’s Radio Access Network went down for more than an hour in and around Delhi. Airtel said there was a network outage in Delhi/NCR and “one of the network nodes had been corrupted.”
- A senior Home Ministry official said about two years ago various telecom giants had been sensitised about the vulnerability of equipment and products imported from China. Both Airtel and Jio use Chinese equipment.
SC lifted its stay on admissions to the prestigious IIT
- Spelling relief to over 50,000 aspirants, the Supreme Court lifted its stay on admissions to the prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) across the country.
- On July 7, the court had ordered a freeze on the process, taking prima facie exception to the grant of bonus marks to all candidates who had appeared in the IIT JEE (Advanced) 2017 examination.
- These extra marks were given to compensate for wrong questions in two of the papers, irrespective of whether a candidate had given answers to them or not.
- However, a Bench led by Justice Dipak Misra said the court was not inclined to interfere, while vacating the stay order, which had affected students who were in the middle of counselling sessions.
- Asking the High Courts not to entertain petitions regarding this issue to “avoid any confusion” in future, the court issued a warning to the IIT authorities that such “kinds of errors in printing and framing of questions should not happen again”.
::International::
Men only Island of Japan declared as a UNESCO World Heritage site
- A men-only island in Japan where women are banned and male visitors must bathe naked in the sea before visiting its shrine, has been declared a UNESCO World Heritage site.
- The tiny landmass of Okinoshima is permanently manned by a Shinto priest who prays to the island’s goddess, in a tradition that has been kept up for centuries.
- Limited numbers are permitted to land on the island in the Sea of Japan (East Sea) — this year it was 200 — for a yearly festival that lasts just two hours, but they must adhere to strict rules.
- Most importantly, they must be men, but they must also strip off and take a purifying dip in the ocean before they are allowed to set foot on the sacred ground of the shrine.
- Despite its inscription on the UNESCO’s World Heritage list — often the prelude to a leap in tourist numbers — shrine officials say they are now considering banning future travel for anyone apart from priests, partly out of fears the island could be “destroyed” by too many visitors.
- The island, which sits off the north-west coast of Kyushu, the southernmost of Japan’s four main islands, was an important window for foreign trade in Japan since ancient times, forming part of a trade route that linked the archipelago to the Korean peninsula and China.
- Thousands of gold rings and other valuable items have been found there.
- UNESCO’s heritage committee considered 33 sites for the prestigious status at its annual gathering in Poland.
- It also accepted Taputapuatea, a portion of the “Polynesian Triangle” in the South Pacific thought to be the last part of the globe settled by humans, to the list.
- It also added Britain’s Lake District — muse for artists from William Wordsworth to Beatrix Potter — and the Valongo wharf in Rio de Janeiro where people from Africa were first brought as slaves to Brazil.
- Ancient caves in west Germany with art dating back to the Ice Age and disused silver ore mines in southern Poland are also among UNESCO’s listings.
- The caves are in the western German state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, where archaeologists have discovered ancient instruments and carvings made from mammoth ivory.
- One of the carvings is a 40,000-year-old figure known as the Venus of Hohle Fels. Historians say it is the oldest known image of a human.